This story was originally published on The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license. A rich inventory of monstrous figures exists throughout Aboriginal Australia. The specific form that their wickedness takes depends to a considerable extent on their location. In the Australian Central and Western Deserts there are roaming ogres, bogeymen (and bogeywomen), cannibal babies, giant baby-guzzlers, sorcerers, spinifex, and feather-slippered spirit beings able to dispatch victims with a single fatal garrote. There are lustful old men who, wishing to satiate their unbridled sexual appetites, relentlessly pursue beautiful,…
